It took a few months longer than expected, but the Essential Phone went up for pre-order in the US yesterday. Our friends north of the border didn't have any way to buy the phone at the time, but that changes today. The Essential Phone is now live on the Telus website... and that's all. Telus is the only place you can get the Essential Phone in Canada.

Telus is asking a pretty penny for the Essential Phone with pricing starting at $290 on a two-year contract. That runs you about $95 per month. A cheaper $85 monthly plan leaves the phone's price at $490. The un-subsidized price is $1050, similar to the Galaxy S8. All these prices are in Canadian dollars, by the way.

Telus has only the black model listed on the website, and the delivery date is listed as September 1, 2017. The 360-degree camera accessory will be available later for $270.

It doesn't. Titanium body is a not essential for a smartphone. Plastic is not bad. Nokia Lumia was made of amazing plastic many of us would choose over glass.

Max

You can't afford it, we get it.

It's obvious that most high end products are luxury, that doesn't mean they don't offer clear advantages for their price.

Railwayman

Care to list those advantages?

I would like to remind you of the simple fact that modern $300-500 have metallic cases and powerful hardware inside. So it is time to list the "advantages" of a device such as the Essential Phone over something like a Xiaomi Mi6 or OnePlus 5.

Titanium isn't such an "exotic" material BTW and kindly notice that most of it is sourced from the Russian company VSMPO Avisma. It is pretty much standard for everything from submarines, medical implantations, engine parts, structural components and so on.

Paying several hundred dollars more just to get a Titanium body around standard components (such as a Qualcomm CPU) instead of aluminum doesn't sound particularly attractive.:)

A "luxury" item should offer something more than just "standard components in a Titanium body".

Max

Having a Titanium body is precisely a luxury, if you don't see that then maybe you simply need to go check the definition of luxury. That's like saying that an Old Navy jean (which I use a lot) are the same that a Levi's or a Banana Republic, they are all jeans that you can wear but they don't feel the same and they have different characteristics that some people appreciate and are okay paying for it. Same goes for the difference between a TCL TV and a Sony TV, and the list goes on.

ATF6

Apparently GAP (Old Navy, GAP, Banana Republic) AND Levi's have seen a notable decline in quality in the last year or so. Just something to look out for when you're looking to buy a new pair.

Max

Yeah I don't doubt it, that's why I usually try to pay at most $30 using offers and coupons so as long as they last a couple of years I'm fine. I have even paid $10 for Old Navy jeans at some point :).

Railwayman

And the technological benefit of Titanium for device body construction is?

Materials should have a practical benefit, "luxury" is not an adequate reason, rather superficial. Titanium are used in engines, medical implantations, submarines etc because of scientifically proven, technical reasons. Not because of "luxury".

But I know that superficial people tend to buy products for superficial, shallow reasons (such as a brand name or some material they think constitute "luxury"). So I am not surprised about comments about it being "worth" to pay several hundred dollars for standard hardware just because of a Titanium body.

Built like a total crap. Watch video closely. Notice the bezel line interrupts like it was made by hands of a blind child... This phone assembly is worse than 100 dollars Chinese crap.

balcobomber25

DOA.

keithzg

Only from Telus? Booo!

Oh right, this doesn't have a headphone jack; double-booo!

(I'm actually an AMOLED partisan, love them particularly for reading at night, so the LCD is kindof a dealbreaker anyways.)

(Cool that this supports band 66 LTE, so it'd work—albeit perhaps with issues, depending on firmware implementations—on Freedom Mobile's LTE. I'm kindof in a market for such a device myself right now, since my Nexus 6P doesn't support band 66 and also the battery has gotten atrocious.)

ATF6

Don't read white/colored text on black (off) backgrounds! It's actually worse for your eyes due to the extremely high contrast.

Night-light LCD / Kindles with the warm-tone displays and non-black text are better for your eyes.

keithzg

Naw, Play Books has a night mode setting, it's a very orangey-amber text and isn't much contrast at all. But contrast has never been much of a problem for me anyways, it's the *amount* of light that I find annoying late at night. So Play Books (or FBReader with the text color changed) on AMOLED is by far the best option for me, since (a) the amber text is warmer than the very greenish light that Kindle/Kobo/etc backlights put out and less of a contrast than backlit eink, and (b) illuminating only the text allows it to be a fraction of the light required for an eink screen since it's not illuminating the entire damned screen then.

I totally get if you can't personally stand black-backgrounded text, but as someone who's often insomniac and bleary-eyed but loves reading to while away those long hours, the advent of AMOLED has been a godsend.

Edit/P.S., I tend to soley read books via eink during the day and AMOLED at night, but Play Books' night mode is fully-automatic and finely gradiated, so the few times I call up a book on my phone during the day I find myself going "whoa now, why the hell is everything so harsh and white?!?" for a split-second before I remember :D